The Party on the Edge

of Forever Part II: "It's my Party and I'll Shanghai if I want to" Edition.

The people that come by here to comment are amazing.

Articulate, passionate, occasionally potty-mouthed and almost always willing to rassle hard but on the fair and square. And as much as my peculiar circumstances (Never deck your Green Party parole officer with a "Ron Paul" yard sign. Not sayin' it happened. Just sayin' "Don't".) prevent me from wading in nearly as often as I'd like, I get such a bracing shot of uplift from the comment section every day you have no idea.

In fact the one below decks here (one flight down) is cooking along so well, it seemed a shame not to top-deck it and share it with the carriage trade.

So here you go.

And thanks.

Jody said...

This didn't seem to take the first time I typed it. So here it goes again:

The two dem frontrunners are not as different as you think.

Yes, Hillary is Hillary, with all that entails, but Obama is black.

2:57 AM

res ipsa loquitur said...

Two thoughts:

I remember gritting my teeth when reading the Fish thing the other day because he just had to go for the "balance" BS. I don't know why an otherwise thoughtful guy feels that he needs to play that game. It makes me think that the editorial board at the NYT is mucking about under the hood of the car (something we know never happens, right?).

Hillary Clinton galvanizes the Right with a revivifying enmity the likes of which few Americans (with the exception of, say, Ted Kennedy...

Which begs the question why BO thought it was a good idea to send Teddy (or any of the Kennedys) out there to stump for him. Yes, I get that the BO campaign likes the comparison to JFK at a thematic level, but the truth is that half of America hates Teddy & Co. and the other half can fairly be described as ambivalent, owing to Teddy's only relatively recent vault into the legion of emotionally mature adults. Now if JFK Jr. had lived, he would have been the Kennedy to send out to the heartland on behalf of BO. That guy had all of the Kennedy glamour without any of the baggage.

It doesn't look like Teddy hurt BO, but when I saw Teddy out there in CA I wondered about it. I guess BO weighed the equities and decided they were in favor of putting Kennedy boots on the ground.

6:26 AM

PhysioProf said...

Eloquent piece, Drifty!

Nevertheless, I think you underestimate the extent to which the wackwackwackaloon syphilitic core of the hate-besotted right can transfer their hate smoothly and efficiently onto whomever their autoritarian masters serve up as the next Dirty Fucking Hippy Enemy.

I think about it this way. These people are addicted to hate like an inveterate sell-your-own-child-into-slavery-for-a-bump addict is addicted to cocaine. 1992 is a week ago, and Bill and Hillary Clinton are an eight-ball.

Suppose that eight-ball runs out today, and all it can be replaced with is a bag of crystal meth. Within just a few days, our addict is going to be a happily raging tweaking teeth-rotting-down-to-the-fucking-pulp screaming-in-the-streets-at-total-strangers apotheosis of a crystal meth head.

Cocaine, what's that? I luuuurve me some crystal meth!!!!!!!!

7:03 AM


US Blues said...

Spot on, DG. But I wonder if the generally uninvolved masses can take any of this into account, while the 27% slaver like mad dogs, ready to hate anybody who does not have an (R) after their name.

7:44 AM

Anonymous said...

All you say is true, but it's not a valid reason for avoiding nominating Ms. Clinton. If Dems avoid the people they think are best because it will cause Rethugs to rise up, we may as well hand the world over to the frothing at the mouth idiots. I have issues with Ms. Clinton's policies and though I would love to support a woman or an African American for president, I found myself hoping for a white male -- John Edwards -- because his ideals and ideas were more in line with mine. I'm now supporting Obama. I will support Hillary if nominated. I pray to God this nation is smart enough and that Diebold is inept enough that we can actually elect a Democrat to try and clean up the mess 8 years of Republican rule has wrought. I'm glad I'm old and probably won't be around long eonough to see what happens in the long run. But I know the past 8 years are not going to disappear easily and if we elect another Republican -- any Republican -- God help us.

8:18 AM

gtomkins said...

When you see a rock rolling downhill...

Give it a little kick to help it get to the bottom faster.

It looks like the half-way sensible folks still left in the Republican Party have managed to get their one candidate with any sort of appeal to swing voters, McCain, the nomination. It's not a done deal, and yes, most of the appeal is fraudulent (the people who vote for him in primaries think he's their peace candidate!) in ways that can be exposed. But what the exposure of his real extremism can't do fully would be completed by Hillary Derangement Syndrome if she is our nominee. Their foamers and their HDS will undo all that appeal to swing voters that their realists achieved by getting McCain the nomination.

No, this is not an argument that Hillary should be our nominee. As jody points out, Barack is black. They'll foam over at that, too, and not in subtle ways useful as a dog whistle. Either candidate of ours, any candidate of theirs, and their foamers win us the election.

8:57 AM

Walt said...

I'll confess, for the benefit of the Court (which is duly instructed to take judicial notice of it at trial), that I voted for McCain.

Not because I like the jowly bastard (in my blog I repeatedly call him The Political Bisexual), but because he was less disgusting than the others. Sort the "hold-your-nose" candidate.

And do I think he stands a chance in Hell of getting his worthless ass elected? No. I plan on voting for whoever the Democrats nominate.

9:01 AM

The Minstrel Boy said...

another wise axiom from the often misunderstood and misquoted sun tsu is when he warns that a prudent commander will always leave the enemy a route of safe egress, because,

men fight the hardest for an indefensible position.

by choosing the route they escape you are choosing the ground for the next confrontation.

9:58 AM


Stephen A said...

Two quotes from SF and the military:

"Why not? Only one Human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else!" -Delenn,B5

"I'd rather have a fighting division than an untried army"
-Douglas MacArthur

Regardless of the Democratic candidate, the right will get uglier than they have ever gotten before in November. We've got a choice between a relative newcomer, or somebody who has been in daily mortal combat with the wingnuts for the past several decades. Remember the fundamental reason the wingnuts hate the Clintons is that they win.

I'm sick to death of the "Oh, noes!! This is a gunfight? I just brought a penknife! And that got confiscated by the TSA!" candidates.

Say what you like about Bill and Hillary but they not only expect an ugly fight to the finish but relish it. They expect to be hated attacked and slandered by the Republicans, Media and a good portion They have collected the most vicious SOBs and Mofos on our side and are ready to fight.

For once I want to hear: "Oh, noes!! This is a gunfight? I just brought a Nuclear Submarine with a full complement of MIRVed Trident missiles with Enhanced Yield 20 Megaton Cobalt Warheads!"

10:22 AM

Pablo said...

yes, indeedy I love that last graf,stephen a


Joe Max said...

Like anonymous said...

Are we supposed to refuse to nominate a candidate just because the Wingnut Army will be driven to ever greater heights of spittle-flecked outrageousness? I'm as pragmatic as the next Liberal - many of my more Liberal friends think I'm TOO pragmatic, especially when the name of Ralph Nader comes up. But the side-effect of the Dems abandoning Clinton in the face of the wingnut backlash is to imbue them with more power. They will KNOW (whether it's true or not) that the only reason Clinton got abandoned by the Dems is out of fear of their power. "Excellent", they will say, rubbing their bony fingers together like Monty Burns, "the Dems fear us and our Billary hating machine. As well they should!" As every school kid knows, if you flee out of fear of the bully, before the bully even takes a swing at you, the bully has already won. You have given them an even greater victory. No, the only way to deal with a bully is to face the bully down with a large helping of Chimpy McJockstrap "bring it on, mo-fo!" And then beat the living crap out of the bully, even if it means taking some lumps in the process, in full view of the rest of the school. This is the only way to END the bully's reign of terror.


damaged goods said...

yep for whatever reason hillary clinton is who they have to vote against because they can't vote against jane fonda.

12:33 PM

Anonymous said...

"Tincture of Dirty Fucking Hippy"

Bottled in pure driftglass no doubt. ;)

As to why Hillary? As SG used to say "people forget to vote for the black man on election day". She's "minority" (even though there are more women than men), she's got WH experience (even if it's vicarious).
IMO 'thugs on the fence can overlook a vagina more easily than melanin. Those types consider her nearly a man anyway.


I'd even go so far as to say the Democrats want to try and rub in that the republicans have abused the system to the point of alienating party members who care more about the future than ideology


tanbark said...

What Drift said.

Hell, bandwidth costs money! :o)

4:31 PM

Woody (Tokin' Lib'rul/Rogue Scholar & O'erall Helluvafella!) said...

Polls over last weekend--i fergit which--had McStain/Anybody ahead of HRC by better than the moe, and tied with BHO... BEFORE he locked up the nomination, and even without the roar of the mighty Right-Wing Media Echo Chamber, which will come around as soon as HRC gets the nod.

the ability of the Dems to confound success is just about legendary, but this year just about takes the cake. In a climate wherein the sitting incumbent is the leat popular president in history, and has tarnished the reputation of his (nominal) party beyond apparent redemption, the Dems narrow the contest on their side to the two candidates in the whole field who could be relied upon to both unite the opposition and divide the base...
fuukin amazing


Michael Hart said...

Why, of all the candidates we had at our disposal,
did my Party pick the one who motivates the Right
as no one else can to swing with all of their remaining
fucktard fury for the fascist fences one last time.

Why??

Two words:

Uneducated electorate.

But the truth is, and has been stated in this very comment section,
the fucktards are brim full of self-loathing and hate, much more than
enough venom to fuel their irrationality against "the enemy" of
America, the librul/socialist/Satanic/porno/DFH/hoards of. . .
fellow countrymen.

Tho I had to clean the vomit off me, Mitts was right, today;
this is a culture war; the last two elections, so
polarized they were close enough to hack and steal, were costly
red victories in the culture war, and blue cannot afford to blow
another one. Picture it: McCain and Huckleberry, lobbing slimeball
after slimeball at Billary Bushinadress and _________, the excess
flowing like a shit river all over this land and waste-deep.
But the Skeksi can, and will, die.


Malacandra said...

I'm with drifty on this one. Yes, the right will demonize whoever we nominate. No, we shouldn't abandon a good candidate just because the righties hate them.

OTOH, we've got another good candidate who has that much less baggage and is pulling a rabbit out of his hat by getting young people energized and disenchanted folks voting again. That could - if it's not completely shallow - trigger a whole new generation of activism and leadership.

Frankly, all the people who talk about how battle-hardened the Clintons are leave me slack-jawed, because to my mind the Clintons got played like a violin by the right and set the tone for the whole freakin' Democratic Party's "let's be civil, meet 'em halfway, and ignore their knives and chains" mentality that was endemic until Howard Dean came along with a stiff shot of atropine to the heart of the party.

I don't remember a lot of Bill and Hill laying solid blows to the ribs of the right. I remember them acting like the Perfect Model of A Modern Moderate Democrat, and still being vilified as if they had been peeing on Ronald Reagan's White House portrait twice daily (and three times on Sunday). I remember "the end of big government as we know it", with welfare moms (and their kids) being kicked to the curb. Don't Ask, Don't Tell. DMCA. NAFTA. Media Consolidation. The Clintons did everything possible to be liked by the righties... and the more they tried, the more they were reviled.

Forgive me if I don't regard that as being tested in the flames and rising like a phoenix.

Nominating Hillary is a little bit like rolling around in raw hamburger before entering the dogfight pit.

Sure, the pit's a mean, nasty place at the best of times... but why go cruising for extra pain?

And, yeah, if she's our nominee, I'll work for Hillary and vote for her because she's light years superior to a GOP candidate. For the Supreme Court alone I'll fight like a wolverine for our nominee in the general election.

But in 2004 I wondered if we nominated the right person, even as I was working for him. If we nominate Hillary, I'll have the same reservations.

7:52 PM

tanbark said...

Quote of the week:

"If the democrats are stupid enough to nominate Hillary, the republicans will rally around a ham sandwich."

Only, they left out:

"Independents and a shitload of conservative democrats will do the same thing."

And that little factoid is not true of Obama. With the Sword of Bush, at $3 bil a week, hanging over their heads in Iraq, and with the economy bouncing around like a blowfly on a hot turd, Obama won't have any problem peeling a lot of those people away from the GOP.

Plenty enough for a democratic tsunami. :o)

I think we might get this bonus with him, too:

If we nominate Hillary, it will be
like mainlining Viagra to an 85 year old man. Collectively, the goopers will get a hard-on that a cat couldn't scratch. Which will mean that they will defend Bush and his bloody petro-posse 'til
death.

With Obama, I think by mid-summer the polls will have the republicans in congress shitting their pants, and George Bush and Dick Cheyney will become a lot more valuable to the GOP as sacrificial pigs for a "Y'all come" barbecue for the voters, on the white house lawn, than they will as retiring republican "statesmen".

Dick Lugar has positively dropped off the face of the map, politically speaking. I mean we see and hear NOTHING of him. I think that's good news, in a way, because I think it means that he's the "Gerald Ford" in waiting.

Of course, if this scenario plays out, it will mean that Obama won't be able to campaign and point to goatboy sitting in the oval office and say to the voters:

"There he is, folks! The pride of the republican party." :o)

And don't forget, Gerald Ford came within a couple of bonehead gaffes,
especially, the pardon,
of keeping the white house for the goopers, nemmind that Nixon had just left in disgrace.

Hard to cackle too much about a forced resignation, with THAT history to think about.

7:53 PM

tanbark said...

Excellent points, Malacandra!

And let's not forget her support of Kyle-Lieberman, the new-and- improved shitmire #2 Koolaid.

Nor, the fact that, in the fall of 2006 when some of the dems were working hard to amend the pentagon apprpriations bill to include language banning the use of clusterbombs in civilian areas, she voted AGAINST the ban.

Senator Obama voted in favor of the ban.

If there were not these little lesion-chancres showing on Clinton's resume', and if she had risked one quark of her political ass for OUR side, then it might; MIGHT, I say, be worth risking her huge negatives with republicans and conservatives across the board, as well as a lot of independents, to nominate her.

But when she comes to us with chronic tennis elbow from giving glute-rubs to the warpimps, such as her enthusiastic applause for bush's slathering on the "surge accomplished" bullshit a few nights ago, while Obama had the common decency to sit as mute and stonefaced as the Sphinx, then, to pretend that she and Obama are "two fine candidates for us", as her supporters attempt to attach themselves to Obama like leeches, is utter, complete, bullshit.

8:08 PM


tanbark said...

BTW; we're democrats. "Unity" not required, until we pick a candidate.

The "unity!" shreik is a dog-whistle for "Lay off Clinton!".

8:11 PM